While joblessness remains stubbornly high, poverty isn’t growing because of unemployment. Most low-income folks work one, two, or even three jobs. But with most new jobs paying between $7.69 and $13.83 per hour, as the National Employment Law Project has found, how can anyone survive or feed their family? This question gets harder to answer when so few new jobs include health care and other benefits.

Coupled with the growing number of states where unions have been declawed through so-called right-to-work laws, America’s working class has been magically transformed into the working poor.

This is a symptom of Ebenezer Scrooge Syndrome. The Republicans afflicted with it celebrate their brand of Christmas all year round.

Meanwhile, the slow but inexorable growth of poverty is spreading across the nation and much of the world. Some European corporations have learned from American Scrooges how to pump up profits on the backs of employees, customers, borrowers, and compliant governments. Machines replace people, lower-skilled workers replace higher-skilled workers, unions are demolished, production is moved to the lowest wage lands, and benefits are trimmed to the meanest level allowed by law.

Alex E. Proimos/Flickr

And now The New York Times has discovered a new category of poor Americans. These young blokes are only in their 20s. They’ve got some commendable college or work experience, but don’t even earn enough to club up for an apartment. Worse, their parents are too poor to house them. Our modern economy has created a whole new class of homeless people.

This disturbing trend has already inspired a successful sitcom: 2 Broke Girls. Surely more are in the works.

OtherWords columnist William A. Collins is a former state representative and a former mayor of Norwalk, Connecticut. OtherWords.org